Jay Gruden: I’ve added “probably too much” to Bengals’ playbook

Posted by Michael David Smith on July 29, 2012, 6:59 AM EDT

AP

Last year the Bengals had a new offensive coordinator in Jay Gruden, a rookie quarterback in Andy Dalton and little time to install the playbook because of the lockout. So they went with a bare-bones version of Gruden’s offense, and it worked well enough that the Bengals made the playoffs.

So does that mean Gruden has decided that a simple offense is the way to go? Nope. Gruden says that this offseason he has beefed up the playbook considerably.

“Quite a bit,” Gruden said. “Probably too much. I have always been criticized about having too many plays, but I would rather have too many plays than not enough. But we are going to continue to expand. From a daily, a weekly basis, we are going to add more things.”

For his part, Dalton said he believes the thicker playbook this season will give him more freedom and lead to better results.

“We can put in more stuff,” Dalton said. “We can all basically do whatever we want with some of the guys.”

So if the 2012 Bengals’ offense improves, that’s a testament to Gruden’s coaching ability. And if the Bengals’ offense declines from last year, that’s an indication that Gruden really has added too much to the offense. We might discover that instead of giving the Bengals a better playbook, Gruden was just over-thinking things by giving the Bengals a bigger playbook.

I thought this season they had switched their playbooks for ‘i-pads’……

mwindle1973 says:Jul 30, 2012 5:26 AM

Translation…he’s finally able to install his full offensive scheme. This is not a big secret offense anyway. It’s basically the Gruden/Gruden offense that he and Jon devised in Tampa. It’s a little bit different, as there are some aspects of arena football mixed in their a little bit. But it’s basically the Gruden west coast offense. Any west coast offense has a huge playbook. But the good part of it, is you don’t finish installing the whole thing until the end of the season. Usually in the west coast offense, you’ll keep adding in plays each week. You probably have plays designed for specific teams, and you most certainly will design new plays for specific opponents from time to time. This is definitely a great thing, the offense was already terribly limited by it’s simplicity last year. It’s not just the size of the playbook either, the plays will be more fully developed. Gruden stated last year, he had to simplify specific plays because of the time crunch, first year in the system, etc. There will be plenty more motion, formation shifts, lining WRs up in multiple places & play action than there was last year. I imagine they will really add to the audible packages as well.